Profile

Stream

Why Photos of Space Should Belong to EveryoneNASA has long released its photos to the public domain. Private spaceflight challenges that legacy of openness.Robinson MeyerFeb 20 2015, 10:33 AM ET

Share on FacebookTwitterLinkedInEmailPrintCommentsYou can’t use this photo of the Falcon 9’s sunset launch. (SpaceX)In the early evening of February 11, a Falcon 9 rocket, owned and operated by Elon Musk’s private spaceflight company SpaceX, applied 1.3 million pounds of thrust to its launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. As the sun set behind it and the Atlantic Ocean glowed amber, that fire took it into the sky. It would now attempt to travel farther into outer space than any SpaceX vehicle had gone before.The launch went perfectly, and after about half an hour, the Falcon 9 had dispatched the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) on its way toward the outer atmosphere.It was SpaceX’s first deep-space mission. And at its farthest point, right as DSCOVR peeled away, a camera on the side of the Falcon 9 looked back over its fuel nozzle and took this picture:SpaceXThat’s Australia, right there, floating on the blue marble of Earth. It’s a historic image, captured by one of the first privately owned spacecraft to penetrate the upper reaches of the atmosphere.It’s also unlike almost any other image taken in the history of American spaceflight. Unlike photos captured by NASA, it is not in the public domain.What does that mean? Unlike this photo or this photo or this photo, you are not supposed to take this image of our home-world circa 2015 and put it on an album cover or hang it on your wall or order yourself a T-shirt with it or publish it on a magazine cover.This is a delight long extended to consumers of NASA imagery. Because cultural works produced by the government are publicly funded, U.S. copyright law takes the view that they are already publicly owned. Thus, you can do anything you want with NASA photos—you own them.As Mike Masnick writes at Techdirt, other space agencies do not take the same approach. The European Space Agency, for instance, has taken images out of circulation by appealing to copyright law. It is Europe’s loss. The American approach of public works becoming public property has reaped riches for the commonweal. NASA pictures have given rise to social movements, art projects, and developments in intellectual history. Landsat, a U.S. program that releases pictures of Earth from space, was estimated to generate almost $1.8 billion for U.S. citizens in the year 2011 alone.And they do more than that. As Parker Higgins, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who first highlighted the discrepancy, writes, pictures of space get kids interested in science. Space photographs, whether of our home planet or home galaxy, just look cool. They reveal the massive structures that undergird every moment of our lives.They say, and the picture above says: You inhabit a planet that orbits around a star, and you have for every moment of your life.Were SpaceX just in the game to make money, I would excuse their private photos. But SpaceX is essentially concerned with something broader—something just as crucial to the common good. Musk has said so himself. Last spring, he told an audience: “The reason SpaceX was created was to accelerate development of rocket technology, all for the goal of establishing a self-sustaining, permanent base on Mars.”Public photos of space, to be used freely, would further that precious goal of human spaceflight. And SpaceX seems interested in expanding copyright on its photos. “We’re actually looking at this right now and will have more to say soon,” a SpaceX spokesman told me.This is an important moment in the history of photographic copyright, and SpaceX should seize it. SpaceX should take the untraditional and pioneering strategy of releasing some or all of its photographs of rocket launches, landings, and spaceflight to the public domain by licensing them under CC-0.This would permit a level of experimentation and proliferation unmatched by any other approach. (One of the most widely distributed photographs in history, after all, is The Blue Marble—a public-domain space photo.) If open-sourced, SpaceX photos could appear in textbooks and on T-shirts. They could be used for art and fashion.And the company would set a bracing precedent: that pictures captured in spaceflight should be free, that artifacts of a crowning human technological achievement should belong to all humans. Such a precedent would protect and bolster the company’s mission even if the company itself does not live to see its objective through.Would donating the photos to the public domain be the safe thing to do? Of course not. If SpaceX wants to cling to every piece of sellable content it has, it should not release the photos. Someday, maybe, it will make a T-shirt with the picture above on it. And some folks will buy the T-shirt, and it will make a little money.﻿

Google Lunar X Prize Teams Partner To Share Risks and RewardsJeff_Foustjfoust@spacenews.comShareMars One Loses Television Dealby Jeff Foust — February 24, 2015News of the terminated contract comes as Mars One is facing heightened skepticism about its plan to send humans to Mars in the mid-2020s. Credit: Mars One video screen grabHarris CapRock Touts Maritime Service That Automatically Switches to Best NetworkGoogle Lunar X Prize Teams Partner To Share Risks and RewardsJeff_Foustjfoust@spacenews.comWASHINGTON — A private venture to send humans on a one-way journey to Mars has suffered another setback with the loss of a television deal, although the venture’s leader said it won’t affect the ongoing selection of crews for the mission.Mars One co-founder and chief executive Bas Lansdorp said Feb. 24 that Mars One had terminated an agreement with entertainment company Endemol announced in 2014 to develop a “worldwide TV event” for the selection of the first Mars One crews. New Scientist first reported the terminated contract Feb. 20.“We ended our cooperation with Endemol some time ago because we could not reach agreement on the details of the contract,” Lansdorp said in response to a SpaceNews inquiry about the status of the agreement. He declined to go into greater detail about the decision to end the agreement, or when that decision was made.In June 2014, Mars One announced an “international partnership” with Darlow Smithson Productions (DSP), a production company owned by Endemol, to develop television programming related to Mars One’s astronaut selection process. Under the agreement, Mars One would grant DSP exclusive access to the astronaut selection process, up though the launch of the first crews.At the time of the announcement, broadcasts of the selection process were to begin in early 2015. DSP did not respond to a request for comment on the canceled agreement.Mars One co-founder and chief executive Bas Lansdorp said Mars One had terminated an agreement with entertainment company Endemol to develop a “worldwide TV event” for the selection of the first Mars One crews. Credit: Mars One video screen grabWhile DSP primarily produces documentaries, Endemol is best known for producing a variety of reality television shows, including “Big Brother.” The original announcement raised speculation at the time that the- See more at: http://spacenews.com/mars-one-loses-television-deal/#sthash.5vs46iIj.dpuf﻿

In 1976, NASA's space shuttle Enterprise rolled out of the Palmdale manufacturing facilities and was greeted by NASA officials and cast members from the 'Star Trek' television series. From left to right they are: NASA Administrator Dr. James D. Fletcher; DeForest Kelley, who portrayed Dr. "Bones" McCoy on the series; George Takei (Mr. Sulu); James Doohan (Chief Engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott); Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura); Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock); series creator Gene Roddenberry; U.S. Rep. Don Fuqua (D.-Fla.); and, Walter Koenig (Ensign Pavel Chekov). NASA is mourning the passing today, Feb. 27, 2015, of actor Leonard Nimoy, most famous for his role as Star Trek's Vulcan science officer Mr. Spock. The sci-fi classic served as an inspiration for many at NASA over the years, and Nimoy joined other cast members at special NASA events and worked to promote NASA missions, as in this 2007 video he narrated before the launch of the Dawn mission to the asteroid belt. Nimoy also was there for the 1976 rollout of the shuttle Enterprise, named for the show's iconic spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA﻿